Army Tests Sole-Killer Theory as Details Emerge

The American flag flew at half-staff at Fort Hood on Friday morning.Credit
Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

KILLEEN, Tex. — On Wednesday and Thursday, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan seemed in a hurry to give his worldly belongings to a neighbor. First a Koran. Then bags of vegetables. Finally a mattress, clothing and odds and ends from his bare one-room flat.

“I’m not going to need them,” he told the neighbor, Patricia Villa. He was going to Iraq, he said, or maybe to Afghanistan.

That was just one of many small and enigmatic details to emerge Friday about Major Hasan, the 39-year-old Army psychiatrist accused of a shooting spree at Fort Hood that killed 13 people Thursday and wounded at least 30 others.

An American-born Muslim of Palestinian descent, he was deeply dismayed by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but proud of his Army job. He wore Middle Eastern clothes to the convenience store and his battle fatigues to the mosque. He was trained to counsel troubled soldiers, but bottled up his own distress about deploying.

Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Army chief of staff, and John M. McHugh, the Army secretary, traveled Friday to Fort Hood, the Army’s largest post, as a widespread investigation into the shooting began.

“This is a tough one,” General Casey said at a news conference. “It’s a kick in the gut. There’s no doubt about that.”

The local police said that ballistics tests showed there was only one gunman and that none of the casualties had been hit by bullets fired by the police.

But the military and federal investigators pointedly refused to release further details on how the shootings happened, why there were initial reports of multiple attackers and why officials took several hours to correct news media reports that Major Hasan had been killed.

Most significant, officials were not prepared to say whether the attack was the act of a lone and troubled man or connected to terrorist groups, foreign or domestic.

President Obama asked the nation to avoid “jumping to conclusions” while the investigations into the Fort Hood rampage continued.

Major Hasan was shot four times during the attack. On Friday, officers at Fort Hood reported that he had been moved to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio for security and medical reasons.

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, said Army officials were trying to determine “if there is something more than just one deranged person involved here.”

Ms. Hutchison said in remarks at the base that while Major Hasan was the only one who had opened fire, it was still unclear whether he had planned the attack alone. “That is a question still to be asked,” Ms. Hutchison said. “That is not a question that has been resolved.”

She also said that the shooting had prompted Army officials to examine procedures in tracking people who may have problems.

“Was enough done?” she said. “I don’t think that anyone would have ever expected a psychiatrist trained to help others’ mental health would be the one who would go off himself, unless there’s more to it, and that’s what they’re looking for.”

In Washington, a law enforcement official said an early search of Major Hasan’s computer did not indicate any direct exchanges with known terrorists. The official said investigators did not have a complete record of Major Hasan’s Internet use, as he had multiple e-mail accounts and used computers in several locations.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation became aware earlier this year of Internet postings by a man calling himself Nidal Hasan. The postings drew attention because they favorably discussed suicide bombings. But the investigators are still not clear as to whether the writer was Major Hasan.

Whether investigators conclude that Major Hasan acted alone — so that the crime was purely military-on-military — or whether they uncover evidence of any civilian co-conspirators off the base will help determine whether he faces trial by court-martial or in federal court.

Under either civilian law or the Uniform Code of Military Justice, a murder conviction could carry a penalty of death. But there are some procedural differences between the two systems.

General Casey sent a directive to commanders to keep soldiers informed about the case and urge them to avoid a rush to judgment, saying he wanted to avoid a backlash against Muslims. There are 1,977 soldiers in the active-duty Army who identify themselves as Muslims, of a total of 553,000 active-duty troops, according to the service.

The emerging portrait of Major Hasan is of a man who came from an immigrant family defined by upward mobility. His parents came to the United States in the early 1960s from a village on the West Bank and settled first in Northern Virginia before moving to Roanoke to open a series of small businesses, including restaurants and a store.

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Paul M. Holt III, a private investigator who went to high school with Major Hasan, called his parents “salt of the earth,” saying, “If you were hungry and didn’t have enough money, they’d let you come back later and pay for it.”

But like many others, Mr. Holt described Major Hasan as having few friends and being quiet to the point of introversion. “He wasn’t very personable,” Mr. Holt said. “I can’t imagine him sitting and listening to people’s problems.”

After graduating with a degree in biochemistry from Virginia Tech, in nearby Blacksburg, he was commissioned as an officer and sent to medical school at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, where he graduated in 2003. He did his internship and residency at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington before entering a two-year fellowship that gave him a master’s degree in public health and trained him in disaster psychiatry.

Two students in the fellowship program said Major Hasan had sat alone in the front of the class and rarely socialized with other students, other than to debate the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He made clear he strongly opposed both, the former students said.

Major Hasan also told family members that he had experienced anti-Muslim harassment in the Army and had tried for several years to be discharged. But the Army, which had paid for his education and was in great need of psychiatrists, refused, family members said.

“Just recently, we received phone calls from the family, saying that Nidal was unhappy because he had big problems at work,” said Mohammed Mohammed, a cousin of Major Hasan’s from Ramallah on the West Bank.

In an interview at their home there, Mr. Mohammed and another cousin, Mohammed Hasan, said they had kept up with Major Hasan’s situation through his brother Anas, a lawyer who recently moved to Ramallah.

Major Hasan’s family in Virginia said he had been afraid of deploying because he had heard all about the horrors of war from returning soldiers. But the cousins in Ramallah offered another reason: he was soon to be wed and did not want to leave his spouse.

The cousins said they learned of the shooting in the early hours of the morning on Friday when relatives phoned them, then saw the news on television. “I was dumbfounded,” said Mohammed Hasan. “I tried to listen for somebody else’s name. But unfortunately it was my cousin.”

The cousins described how Major Hasan and his two brothers had turned to religion after the death of their parents, their father in 1998 and their mother 2001.

“They became very religious after their mother died,” Mohammed Hasan said. “They were very observant. They prayed a lot.”

But he denied that they were religious to the point of fanaticism. “Their religion had nothing to do with politics,” he said.

In an interview on NBC’s “Today” show, Lt. Gen. Robert W. Cone, the Fort Hood commander, was asked about reports that before opening fire, Major Hasan had yelled “Allahu akbar!” — “God is great!” General Cone said soldiers at the scene had reported “similar” accounts.

Muslims who attended mosques with Major Hasan in Virginia, Maryland and Texas said they had never heard him express extremist views about politics or religion. And though openly opposed to the wars, he did not express anti-American sentiments, they said.

At the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring, Md., Major Hasan was a regular at Friday prayers who also dropped by on occasion to help on a homeless program. Sabir Rahman, past president of the mosque’s board, called him “a very gentle person” who “never expressed strong words about anybody.”

At the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Va., where Major Hasan’s family often prayed and he occasionally went, the imam, Sheik Shaker Elsayed, recalled that his greatest interest seemed to be in finding a wife.

Yahya Hendi, a part-time chaplain at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, said Major Hasan had once praised him for giving a sermon opposing extremism. “He felt that Muslims needed to speak about peace and love,” Imam Hendi said.

In Killeen, a neighbor of Major Hasan’s, Willie Bell, got a call from him on Wednesday night. Mr. Bell had given Major Hasan his wireless password, and now the major was asking him to turn on his Internet system. “He said, ‘Nice knowing you, friend,’ ” Mr. Bell said. “ ‘I’ll be moving.’ ”

On Thursday morning, Major Hasan, without wearing his traditional Muslim cap, left his apartment complex in his car, Mr. Bell said. The F.B.I. confiscated Mr. Bell’s laptop, he said.

A version of this article appears in print on November 7, 2009, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Details Trickle Out as Army Tests Sole-Killer Theory. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe